Friday, June 07, 2013

Reflecting on various liberation struggles and their successes and failures, it seems to me that the struggle for liberation is not a struggle to privilege a new set of prejudices, but also to liberate the oppressed from their own set of prejudices. This is the meaning of Gandhi's Swaraj, and liberation struggles have succeeded or failed to the extent they have recognized this. That is why Jinnah's Pakistan is a failure, why the Arab Spring disappoints, why the liberation of al-Sadr in Iraq from Saddam Hussein has not led to anything positive; but why Mandela's South Africa does seem to have moved forward. Likewise the successes and failures of European and American feminism, and the American struggle against racism can be likely traced to the extent that this idea of Swaraj was implicit in the movement.